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ggplot2 is an R package for producing statistical, or data, graphics, but
it is unlike most other graphics packages because it has a deep underlying
grammar. This grammar, based on the Grammar of Graphics (Wilkinson,
2005), is composed of a set of independent components that can be composed
in many different ways. This makes ggplot2 very powerful, because you are
not limited to a set of pre-specified graphics, but you can create new graphics
that are precisely tailored for your problem. This may sound overwhelming,
but because there is a simple set of core principles and very few special cases,
ggplot2 is also easy to learn (although it may take a little time to forget your
preconceptions from other graphics tools).
Practically, ggplot2 provides beautiful, hassle-free plots, that take care of
fiddly details like drawing legends. The plots can be built up iteratively and
edited later. A carefully chosen set of defaults means that most of the time
you can produce a publication-quality graphic in seconds, but if you do have
special formatting requirements, a comprehensive theming system makes it
easy to do what you want. Instead of spending time making your graph look
pretty, you can focus on creating a graph that best reveals the messages in
your data.
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